Category: sql server

About a year ago I wrote about a new feature in SSMS that allows you to add a data classification to your columns. Today we’ll discuss what happens behind the scene and how to look at the classifications later.

It’s taken longer than I thought it may and I’ve run into several problems along the way but had a few people in the MVP community swing some homeruns to help me complete the BETA of this new SQL Server community query tuning tool.

In case you aren’t familiar with #MSIgnite, it’s a huge event where Microsoft debuts all the new shiny software that you’re going to want your hands on immediately and the conference is happening right now and goes until Friday.

You can watch and learn all about the exciting new things at this link:

It always seems that when I give a talk on performance there are 100+ people packed in the room but when it comes to security there’s 10 to 15 people. No one likes patches, unless you’re talking about a puppy named patches or something that’s not related to updates; yet, it’s so important that we all do them.

SQL is a stout language and SQL Server has so many features that it’s impossible to be an expert in everything. I see a lot of people gravitate towards performance; but, that’s not the best place to focus. If you don’t know the fundamentals of the language then you will never be the best performance tuner.Read More »

Understanding the fundamentals is key for success, with everything you do. These days SQL Server has expanded into much more than just a database; but, products that ingest data for analysis still need to get the data from a source, such as an OLTP SQL database.Read More »

I’ve been in technology a long, long time (more than 2 decades). Over the years, I learned Access which took me to Oracle and then translated nicely to SQL Server where I’ve spent the bulk of my time.

Along the way different projects had different requirements and challenges. To take these on and be a better DBA, I learned VB 6 and then VB.NET. A C++/C# developer asked why I was wasting my time relearning VB when I could learn a real language (C#). Years later I got tired of TechNet samples being only C# and I learned it and primarily use C# as my dev language of choice today.